A magic tome speaks to the wizard and tells him to do things at night in exchange for the promise of great future power.

The following ideas could be used for player characters stuck on a PC background and purpose. Game masters could also use them for interesting NPC wizard hooks. If you have any ideas for more hooks, just comment below, maybe we’ll get to 100.

Master’s experiment goes wrong, transforming the PC and cursing the master. PC quests for way to save master’s plight.

To become powerful enough to destroy an evil artifact that has cursed his family for generations.

Impress the local village beauty with wizardly power and marry her.

Bend a powerful, named demon to his service for 100 years.

Seeks immortality, not just for self, but for ailing mother as well.

Raised and trained in a horrible wizard school, he yearns to return a hero with great powers and lord it over his teachers and former fellow students.

To become a god, but not just any god. He wants to stage a coup against the god of magic and control the entire domain himself.

An evil despot enslaved his family. He will pay.

To uncover a whole new source of magic (via a rules supplement you’ve been dying to try out).

He does not understand his powers. They seem to happen at random or when he’s in great danger. Perhaps he will one day learn to control his gift.

To become a benevolent master of several worthy apprentices.

To found a significant and powerful school of magi.

To master the art of magic item creation and quests for ways to make the process quicker and easier.

His master and fellow apprentices were attacked by powerful creatures and whisked away. It’s up to the character to find out where they are being kept and to free them.

To attain the power of wish and use it to undo a great wrong the PC has committed.

The character desires to master illusion to become a spy for the arch-magi.

Magic is dying, fading. The mage must discover the source of magic, learn why it’s diminishing and restore it.

A race of strange creatures who feed and grow on magic are hunting wizards and magic items for food.

The character wants to create an artifact to solve the problem another hook in this list poses.

A thief broke into the master’s tower and stole a powerful item. The PC has been tasked with the item’s return.

The PC is being forced into marriage against his will. He flees instead, determined to use his wits and growing magic powers to make a name for himself in the world.

The character found a scroll long ago with magic writing on it. So far he’s been unable to read it, but it promises to reveal incredible secrets and knowledge. The PC searches for a means to read the scroll.

A mysterious order has recruited the PC in its fight against a powerful cabal.

The PC’s family serves a nearby wizard enclave’s mundane needs. Now that the character has shown some magical aptitude, he’s been assigned the role of ambassador to help with village-magi issues in exchange for ongoing training.

The PC has discovered a secret path to a strange realm and wants to explore it, but he cannot do it alone as the realm seems dangerous.

The PC has learned of overlaps between planes and dimensions and seeks these areas out to explore possible treasures hidden within.

The wizard yearns for fame as the scribe of the world’s most powerful spells.

The identity of the PC’s master remains a secret, and the missions he sends the character on are bizarre, but there must be a grand plan behind everything, which the PC is determined to discover.

The PC wants to travel the planes and explore places never seen before with civilized eyes.

An ancient prophecy predicts a dangerous result but great rewards, and the mage is determined to make the prophecy come true.

The character wishes to learn the source of magic – and then control it.

The PC’s bullying brother is also a wizard but much more powerful, and the PC needs to protect his parents and other siblings from the brother’s brutal ways.

The wizard seeks magic power to gain temporal wealth and mundane power to rule a region.

The PC wants to build a society of scribes who trade knowledge, incantations and scrolls throughout the realm – and to also act as an organisation that fights against evil/good/an enemy.

The character wants to setup a simple alchemist shop, brew potent potions and become a secret power who manipulates the nobility.

The mage quests to learn a whole new type of magic and bring it back to the King to protect the small kingdom from its many enemies.

A demon killed the wizard’s master and the PC now seeks the creature’s identity, its home base, and a way to kill it.

A cult bearing torches and pitchforks drove the magus out of his village and left him to die in the forest. The PC wishes to return some day to drive the cult out so he can be with his family again.

With a lust for magic items, the wizard seeks to collect one of every type of magic ring.

He longs to start a travelling road show that delights folk with the strange monsters, cruel traps and wondrous magic he encounters in his travels and explorations.

He inherited a mighty artefact yet cannot determine how to tap into any of its powers. He must keep the artefact a secret while pursuing all options to learn how to unleash the item’s abilities.

The fledgling wizard has six powerful spells he desires to someday master (such as invisibility, teleportation, etc.) as a matter of personal style (think themed comic book hero or villain).

To graduate from the school where the PC has become an exceptional student, custom dictates he duel another graduating student to the death. The PC has exercised an obscure rule that allows him a two year sabbatical to give him time to gain more power on his own and ponder what he will do.

A secret order of magi who serve the emperor has told the PC he will join their ranks, but the PC has no desire to become a magical assassin and has evaded their recruiters…so far.

The wizard’s youngest sibling summoned a being from another plane who escaped his shackles and now roams free in the land, killing and sowing misery. The being has sworn vengeance upon the character’s entire family.

The spellcaster wishes to merely be an entertainer who uses his abilities to amaze audiences, but the Bard’s Guild forbids magic use and is watching the caster carefully.

The wizard’s noble upbringing gave him the life-long services of a humble servant who is secretly a spy and who has been responsible for many of the PC’s conflicts while growing up without the PC realizing it.

The wizard’s family worships a god who opposes magic, and now the PC is being hunted by his own relatives.

The god of magic is actively trying to recruit the PC, going to more extreme lengths each attempt.

The character craves to join an elite group of warrior mages but he is not tough enough, so the mage quests for ways to make him stronger and a better fighter.

The mage is cursed and is one of the rare few who can fumble while casting spells. (While the PC quests for ways to remove the curse, the DM should make up a fumble chart.)

A battlemage since birth, he is tired of war and went AWOL a few weeks ago. He is uncertain if the military hunts him, but if so, there will be other battlemages as part of the hunting unit(s).

The wizard wants to assemble a great library of arcane knowledge and hire sages and scribes, but agents from the Library of Lore plan to sabotage his efforts and steal away any scrolls and books of value.

With intentions of founding a new arcane guild, the character has created an order that uses colours of robes and styles of hats to establish a hierarchy, but enemies see this as a way to identify the most valuable targets.

The character has studied the planes all his life and now recruits companions to explore legendary locations.

A villain amasses a strange retinue of monsters that the PC has learned consists of thought eaters, rust monsters, disenchanters and other threats to knowledge and lore.

An ancient tome, that has fallen into a young wizard’s hands, describes the incredible and powerful properties of rare herbs whose locations are remote and dangerous.

The character seeks to make his name famous and synonymous with high quality and powerful magic items that he will some day learn to craft.

In a terrifying discovery, the hapless mage now knows the true name of a powerful devil.

Magical locks are his specialty, and he makes good coin with his security services, but when a rash of thefts from his clients occurs, fingers begin to point at him.

The character specializes in breaking magical locks, bypassing arcane barriers and solving the most diabolical guarding puzzles. A villain who depends on his magical defenses targets the mage and his associates to rid himself of a potential security threat.

What would you do with knowledge of crafting various types of golems faster, cheaper or with new capabilities?

The mage wishes to make his young warrior companion the King so he can become the power behind the throne.

8 Responses to “63 Wizard Hooks”

64. Magic has been outlawed as “evil” by the fanatics who run organised religion (partly because the Wizards threatened their political authority and partly for genuine grievances); Wizards exist only covertly, masquarading as mundane citizens most of the time. The character must find a way to rehabilitate the public perception of magic in a world that would hang him or her before listening to reason.

That was a key element of the background of my first Fumanor campaign, and it proved an entertaining subplot.

65. The mage’s ancestors sold their souls and that of all their decendants to an evil diety in exchange for every member of the family having strong magical power. He now quests for a way to free himself and his family from their terrible fate. Most of his family worship the evil diety and will try to stop him, and freeing himself may mean the loss of his magical power.

66. A Wizard’s Guild Is An Organisation Like Any Other, I: The head of a local chapter runs up huge gambling losses and embezzles from the guild’s accounts to cover his losses – then sends the PCs on high-risk high-reward expeditions to replace the missing funds.

67. A Wizard’s Guild Is An Organisation Like Any Other, II: The local organised crime figures demand protection money from the guild. The PCs are sent to teach these over-reaching thugs a lesson.

68. A Wizard’s Guild Is An Organisation Like Any Other, III: A small-time local organised crime gang discovers that if they can convince people that they are actually wizards, they become a lot more intimidating. Soon the local guild is flooded with complaints both directly and to organisations and groups with the power to bring the guild to heel.

69. A Wizard’s Guild is just like a casino vault: …and this one’s been targetted by Oceans III, complete with a greedy inside man, just as the PCs are hired to upgrade the security of the guild’s treasury.

70. The Academy that the mage goes to has students go out on their own and get hands-on experience in the world for a few years, as opposed to constantly being isolated or among other wizards, before they can graduate.

71. The head of the local Wizard’s Guild was found to be the local crime boss. The Guild headquarters helped the local authorities bring down the local chapter, and all members were expelled from the guild. The PC must now find a way to practice/learn magic without guild harrassment, or find a way to get accepted back into the guild.

72. The PC is questing to become powerful enough to end the Blood War, one way or another, just to prove that he can.

73. The isolated life of learning that most wizards live was not the PC’s cup of tea, so he went adventuring just because it seemed like a more exciting option.

74. One of the PC’s parents, friends, siblings, spouse, kids, etc. caught the fancy of, and had their soul stolen by, a demon. The PC now quests to get back the soul and destroy the offending demon, permanently if possible.

You did it! Another hooks article! I had to wait to reply to it so I could copy down the best ones. I love the wizard who is trying to avoid being recruited into something and the one who wants to create his own brand of crafted magic items.

Here’s one you’re missing:

75. The wizard wants to build his own wizards’ tower with traps and tricks that make guards and wards look like a twisty tie.

76. The wizard has an eccentric love of colors and rainbows and wants to go around casting color spray, build a stained glass sanctuary, and eventually live in a prismatic sphere with permanency on it.

80. Interesting reading. An ancient scroll tells of the origin of magicians. It details a method to predict a child will be born with magical talent, and perhaps hints on how to ensure it. (Partly based on an idea in an Ars Magica book.
81. The characters ancestors were given the power of magic in return for performing some task, possibly defending against a threat. For generations that task hasn’t been needed. Perhaps the threat has been contained or imprisoned, the river no longer needs dregging etc. Now that’s changed and the character’s family has to start earning their power or lose it. Do they even remember what they were supposed to do? Or has the source of their power become vague legend?